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> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all th

• refurb 10y ago
  Not sure if you're living in the US, but I do and I have the exact opposite viewpoint. The amount of waste, corruption and poor planning by the gov't makes me feel like I'm throwing money away. I'd rather give it a charity since then I'd know a majority of it had an impact. I think if the gov't was a bit more efficient and could be shown to be good stewards of money I'd probably hate paying taxes a lot less.
  • ethbro 10y ago
    Having worked for some charities, there's sausage being made there too. Just like the government has spots of greater than free market efficiency. I don't think one or the other is strictly better. You point at corruption and waste wherever you find it, then you work to make it less.
    • mi_noi_noi 10y ago
      You could say charities are better in the sense that: - You at least have more than one choice. If the charity you give to performs poorly by whatever metrics you value, you can give to another one next time. - It is voluntary. Nobody with guns will put you in a cage if you don't donate to a charity, as is the case if you don't pay your taxes.
      • ryanhuff 10y ago
        Couldn't you say that about whatever city that you live in? Many people voluntarily live in their choice of city or state (in the U.S.). If you don't like that government's priorities, you could move elsewhere.
        • mi_noi_noi 10y ago
          What if you don't like any cities or states? With charities you can always make your own. Don't have that option in your system. I'm not American, but aren't some taxes that go to education/welfare/healthcare on a federal level? If so, are you going to tell people to leave the country? It's very expensive and for many practically impossible. Besides, is the goal not here to spend the money as efficiently as possible? In that case we need as much competition and experimentation as possible. Something I think is achieved to a much higher degree with my system than yours. Also, your suggestion still doesn't make it voluntary. In my system someone can not donate to charity, but use their money for something else. Charities are not the only way to help the worse off.
          • vacri 10y ago
            The idea that people would spend as much on charity as they do on taxes is one of the most clearly bunkum libertarian fantasies out there. Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have (that's why we have modern levels of welfare).
            • dmichulke 10y ago
              You do realize that government actually doesn't earn the money but takes it away from others that earn it. It's not as if with government we have more money. So all that matters is efficiency and if a charity is more efficient than a government, why is there no state where you can choose whom to give (at least part of) your taxes?
              • ska 10y ago
                This is a common fallacy, which hurts the ability to reason usefully about problems like those in this thread (regardless of where you fall on the "size of government" issue). The fallacy is in imagining it is meaningful to separate money (earned or otherwise) from the system of government it was generated in. Your ability to "earn the money" is fundamentally tied to this system, and if you change one, you change the other necessarily (not a comment on the direction of the delta). Thinking about the economy as a thing that exists on its own, and the government as an institution that just "takes away" from this is just nonsensical. The statement "It's not as if with government we have more money" is quite likely a category error. After all the ideas of money and the ideas of government are so deeply intertwined in their evolution that people haven't managed to separate them, ahistorical thought experiments in common introductory economics notwithstanding. For what it's worth, I am sympathetic to some of the arguments you are heading towards, I just object to the sloppy thinking variants of them - which are the most common, unfortunately.
      • richmarr 10y ago
        > ...performs poorly by whatever metrics you value... And there's the rub. You don't, and won't, have that information. To my knowledge there's one single solitary charity that provides adequate metrics to donors to support this kind of decision and for them it's on principle rather than to open up the market. Charities as a whole are simply not incentivised to share this kind of information because they compete for funds based on marketing, not efficiency, and there is currently no mechanism to change that. Yes, there are organisations that audit charities in small numbers and put them on approved lists, but you're still only getting a fading rubber stamp. > It is voluntary... He said, casually cutting the funds available for public infrastructure, welfare, health, education and the military by a couple of orders of magnitude.
      • lmm 10y ago
        > - You at least have more than one choice. If the charity you give to performs poorly by whatever metrics you value, you can give to another one next time. You can vote out your government. Charities seem more PR-focused, and the press seems less interested in holding them to account. I have a lot more faith in government to spend money effectively than I do in private charity.
        • humanrebar 10y ago
          > You can vote out your government. It's exceedingly hard to end an entitlement even if it's clear it doesn't work.
          • eric_the_read 10y ago
            It's not an entitlement per se, but Head Start is a classic example of the government program that doesn't work, but can/t be cancelled. Even DHHS admits it doesn't work[0], but it's impossible to cancel politically. [0] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_summary_final.pdf https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_s...
  • p_eter_p 10y ago
    People always say this, but nobody can ever point to a solid example. Do you have hard numbers that government social programs are less efficient than charity?
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    • rtb 10y ago
      > People always say this Americans always say this.
    • marknutter 10y ago
      Ask yourself this: is the government efficient with its defense spending? If the answer is no, why would it be any different with its social programs?
      • lmm 10y ago
        Are private charities more efficient with their defense spending?
      • deadbunny 10y ago
        Just because one branch/department is wasteful doesn't mean others are. Trim that military budget and you'll start seeing efficiencies simply because they don't have that extra trillion to spunk up the wall.
        • duderific 10y ago
          A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
  • bgw 10y ago
    Government spends money with more accountability and with more efficacy than charities do.
  • soperj 10y ago
    Tons of Charities pay their CEOs a shit ton of money. Boy Scouts CEO made 1.6 million as of 2010. I think it was Operation Smile that paid theirs over a million as well.
    • jhbadger 10y ago
      Exactly. All a non-profit means is that they don't set aside money as "profit". They can still pay themselves outrageous salaries. It's also why rich people set up "foundations".
    • sbov 10y ago
      He made 1.6 million because he deferred his compensation the previous two years. And he also retired and got some money for that. So you're basically looking at what he made for working for 3 years, not what he made in 1 year. It's still a lot of money but nowhere near what you're implying.
    • tawayway 10y ago
      The counterargument is a well-intentioned but clueless volunteer should not be in charge of directing millions of dollars in donations. I imagine it's hard to find someone with skills to efficiently run a large organization without paying them an industry wage.
  • coconut_crab 10y ago
    I live in one of the most corrupted countries in the world. Yet our newborn immunisation rate is nearly 100%, with free healthcare and education for the people in poorer rural area and ethnics minorities. And my tax money contributed to that. I guess it's fine to hate your government, but a better solution is to change it than avoid paying tax. Because if people pay less tax then then the poor and vulnerable will be affected first, not the corrupted interest group.
    • _vn5r 10y ago
      What country is that?
      • coconut_crab 10y ago
        Vietnam, ranks 110 or so in transparency index
        • camillomiller 10y ago
          Recently visited. It's a wonderful country. I loved the people, I love their pride and attitude. It's clear that you got some problems here and there (and maybe the family concept is a bit too strong). All in all, for me it's been just a wow after another. I met very few Americans, and each one of them was completely flabbergasted by how far the country and the people are from what they've been taught.
        • coldtea 10y ago
          >ranks 110 or so in transparency index Those "transparency indexes" tend to reflect the biases (cultural and political) and the interests of the major contributors to the organizations that produce them (including organizations like OECD). And unlike measurable data, where you can double check, here you have to agree not just on the methodology, but on the validity of various sources, self-reporting (which is often used as a proxy), etc.
        • unixhero 10y ago
          Corruption Perception Index is a better measure of corruption.
  • yequalsx 10y ago
    I believe there are no examples of charity ever being able to provide the basic needs of all but a small percent of the poor of a nation. It was not charities that provided clean water. It was not charities that largely ended hunger or gave healthcare to the poor. It was not charities that educated the masses. Government is necessary. It can be done badly but it doesn't have to be.
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    • edanm 10y ago
      You might be right but I'm not sure what you prevented is any kind of proof that charity couldn't provide those needs. It's just that in most cases, governments effectively have a monopoly on providing these kinds of services, making charity either redundant, or legally unable to provide said services.
      • CJefferson 10y ago
        In the time before governments provided these services, or in countries where the government is too broken to provide them, charity makes a good effort but fails to provide basic complete coverage.
      • vidarh 10y ago
        Universal healthcare and other welfare reforms in most of the world came as a direct response to the total failure of charitable systems. You are right: It's not proof that it can't work. However, despite extensive attempts, we also have no proof that it works, and plenty of proof that government welfare systems work far better than the charitable solutions that preceded them.
      • stuaxo 10y ago
        The problem is, you need quite a bit more money than charity can give. People just aren't generous enough for it timescale, the example elsewhere in this thread of universal healthcare is a good one.
      • 10y ago
  • sixo 10y ago
    Well, even given the statement about the gov, that's not quite right: it was never your money to throw away.
  • kbenson 10y ago
    Given that all the taxes go to perpetuate a system which allows the US to be successful, I think it's hard to make a case that overall the majority is not working usefully in some way, even if not obvious. I think it would be hard to make a case that if the government ceased to exist tomorrow and no more taxes were owed, we would all be better off.
    • clarky07 10y ago
      I don't think anyone has said they think they should pay 0 taxes. Just that perhaps 50% is more than is needed, and that we waste a lot of tax money.
  • sulam 10y ago
    Great idea. Let's donate to a charity to pay for the fire department. And the police. And schools. And transportation infrastructure. Wait, what? No charities exist that create these organizations? Oh darn, hoist on the reality petard, whatever will we do? Pay taxes you say?! But no, let's just have smaller government! Nevermind that we will have children with lead poisoning, plant workers with cancers, or zero safety net for the elderly, working poor, or disabled. At least I won't be paying taxes!
    • msandford 10y ago
      That's actually the point. Fire and police and roads are all very, very cheap compared to wars, nation building, etc. People are tired of paying for things that they don't agree with. I can't say that I blame them too much.
      • vacri 10y ago
        What do you see nation-building as, if things like roads aren't part of it?
        • mr-snoman 10y ago
          I think they mean nation building as trying to install certain governments in countries on the other side of the world, toppling heads of state, etc.
  • megablast 10y ago
    The road out front of your house costs $100,000 to build. You just using that, gets you back all the taxes you spend. Now multiple that by 10 million things, and you are still better off.
    • Scea91 10y ago
      You do not use the road alone.
      • deadbunny 10y ago
        Which is why we all pay for it through taxes because it benefits everyone, even those who don't drive.
    • clarky07 10y ago
      The federal gov't spends less than 2% of the budget on ground transportation (roads, bridges, and even amtrak included in that number). So, no, the road out front doesn't in fact get us back all the taxes we pay
  • deepGem 10y ago
    I live in India, one of the most corrupt countries that I have lived in. I cringe paying atrocious taxes. I shared your sentiment for a long time but these days I just am happy to pay whatever taxes like Bourdain says. To me personally, the effort required to optimise taxes is better spent elsewhere. Which is also why I cringe when startups talk about optimising taxes before even making a dime in profit and fall prey to registering their companies in low tax regions.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • Confusion 10y ago
    Proudly paying your taxes doesn't mean you don't recognize that the government may not be the most efficient organisation around. It doesn't mean that you agree with the decisions being made. It only means you agree that something between X and Y% of taxes needs to be paid to operate a country smoothly. And I've delegated the decision of what exactly to spend it on to others, so I accept that I can't always be 100% happy with the choices. The amount of waste, corruption and poor planning by the gov't [..] Companies do the exact same thing. How much money is wasted by the next failed IT project? Poor planning, check. Funnelling money to their own pockets and those of their friends? Check. Governments aren't the most efficient organisations around. But Western governments certainly aren't the worst either.
    • lostboys67 10y ago
      Exactly I worked at one company where someone spent 15 Man Years and a million pounds reimplimenting a system in Oracle because it was "company standard". They did this to tick a box for promotion to the next level - not the best use of the share holders money
    • refurb 10y ago
      Companies do the exact same thing. Yeah, but companies waste their own money. Not mine. Unless I'm a shareholder, I could care less if they flushed cash down the toilet.
      • Delmania 10y ago
        With tax breaks, subsidies, and grants, they get to throw your money down the crapper as well.
      • Confusion 10y ago
        They waste your money by charging you higher prices. And their competitors do the same thing. You don't pay the lowest possible price for everything. Free markets are a utopia: they don't actually exist.
  • callmeal 10y ago
    Actually they are[1]. And if you want to consider things like roads, railways and other infrastructure -- think about how almost every private institution that built that infrastructure went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the taxpayers. A lot of the "government is inefficient" talk comes from people who want all regulation to go away for their own benefit. A little searching will also show you a long list of private industries and institutions with equivalent amounts of waste, corruption and poor planning. [1] http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/ http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-ef...
    • marknutter 10y ago
      Nobody ever argues that roads, railroads, and highways are an unfair tax burden. It's such a ridiculous straw man. The beef that most Libertarians have with government spending is with entitlement programs.
      • thebooktocome 10y ago
        Sandy Rios, of American Family Radio, has indeed argued in the past that the Interstate Highway System was and is a waste of taxpayer dollars. So no, it's not a straw man. Some conservatives really do believe this.
        • jessaustin 10y ago
          I'll remember this example the next time some conservative starts ranting about Bill Ayers.
        • AnthonyMouse 10y ago
          > So no, it's not a straw man. Some conservatives really do believe this. Weak man vs. straw man. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
          • mfringel 10y ago
  • lostboys67 10y ago
    As compared to Kids Company in the UK or the channelling of tax payer funds to charities in Tower Hamlets
  • fnazeeri 10y ago
    That charity doesn't exist without our government to setup and run the legal, tax, postal, transportation, employment and other systems that enable the charity. Just sayin'...
  • pjmorris 10y ago
    The government provides the money you don't want to throw away. Arguably the money has value because it's got a built in customer - the government - in the form of taxes. That's got to be worth something to you, even if you don't like everything else the government does.
  • varelse 10y ago
    The problem (IMO of course) is that there is no better and attainable option. For in the current system, you broadly have the choice of: 1. Wasting your money on exotic weaponry and wars of expansion whilst starving the populace and enabling a small subpopulation of rich cheaters to dodge their fair societal debt 2. Wasting money on enabling social programs that allow a large subpopulation of poor cheaters to dodge their fair share of societal debt and hinder the rich from buying a second yacht. I believe South Park refers to this as "Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich." Sadly, in both cases, the upper middle class ends up footing most of the bill. The past 2 months have illustrated the sort of alternative that can actually get elected here. Do you find this encouraging? I don't.
  • xapata 10y ago
    In my experience, every large organization is terribly managed and inefficient. The government not noticeably different. I guess I'm saying I don't mind paying taxes. I consider the tax rate when choosing how much to charge my customers. I'm sure you do the same when choosing a job. If you paid less in tax, you'd earn less money. Obviously not at a 1:1 ratio, but it's something to keep in mind.
    • geodel 10y ago
      Even as the very cautious spender I'd imagine I have wasted at least few hundred dollars between me and spouse just since new year. So at large scale even larger wastage does not look inconceivable.
    • deadbunny 10y ago
      Spot on,anecdotal evidence ahoy but I'm a contractor so I move around a lot in the last few years I've worked for a government department, a mid stage medical startup, a late stage startup, a large corporation, and a very new startup. The efficient ones have been the smaller companies in everything from decision making to process. The gov department and large corp are Kafkaesque nightmares where getting an account is a 3 page form and a 5 day SLA. At the medical startup I was given a laptop and asked for a PR by the end of the day, at the large corp I didn't get a laptop for a week and even then I didn't get logins (yes, logins...) to the code repo for another week. Governments are inefficent because they are made up of lots and lots of people, same as large companies. Everything needs to be triple checked, rubber stamped and have all people in the chain cover their asses because if anything goes wrong it's very important not to be anyone's fault (but it's definitely someone's fault. This isn't a blame free post mortem here!)
      • xapata 10y ago
        A large company once hired me for a 5-week project. I got onsite and made my reqs for laptop and access. They gave me a badge at the end of week 1. I received the laptop in week 3 and the accounts were setup in week 4. Happily, they paid for the entire time.
  • freeflight 10y ago
    >I'd rather give it a charity since then I'd know a majority of it had an impact. A few years ago, I wish I still had the link, I read an article detailing exactly that topic and the gist of it pretty much boiled down to: What the US lacks in "welfare state" it makes up trough donations to charities by private citizens, one of the major differences between Europe and the US. As nice as that might sound, it's also an incentive for the government to keep on cutting spending on social welfare as it assumes the private donations to charities are gonna make up for the difference.
  • libertymcateer 10y ago
    > The amount of waste, corruption and poor planning by the gov't [Citation needed.]
    • huntermeyer 10y ago
      http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-accounting-errors/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account...
  • Lagged2Death 10y ago
    By global standards, the US government is spectacularly honest, effective, and efficient. That's one reason the US is so attractive to foreign investment and foreign entrepreneurs. Charities and private businesses actually succumb to corruption, inefficiency, and outright fraud pretty often. How much research do you perform on your charitable contributions versus your taxes? Do you know, off the top of your head, how many cents on the dollar actually support the cause of your favorite charity, and how many are "wasted" on administration?
  • dota168 10y ago
    Have you been outside the US? You are living in the USA bubble. Go to a 3rd world country and you'll understand what government corruption and waste is.
    • tcfunk 10y ago
      This is not a valid argument. If one thing is bad and another is worse, it does not make the bad thing good.
      • AIMunchkin 10y ago
        Well yes it is actually, by collecting more data, you are doing a better job marginalizing the distribution of government corruption and waste across the planet. And that can make a seemingly bad thing turn out to actually be relatively good and vice versa. Or, to quote some famous dead dude: "The World Is a Book and Those Who Do Not Travel Read Only One Page" - St Augustine Or, to quote Anthony Bourdain himself: “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.”
        • tcfunk 10y ago
          But I'm not talking about relative goodness or badness. If I say "boy I'm tired today, I only slept 4 hours" and you say "you're tired? I didn't sleep at all!", your being more tired doesn't make me any less tired. In the same regard, other governments doing a much worse job than the US government doesn't mean that the US government is doing the best job that it can.
          • AIMunchkin 10y ago
            Sure, that's possibly true. But if the ensemble of governments planetwide are mostly doing worse than the US(1), then you need to consider it might not be humanly possible to do much better even if it's obvious how to do better theoretically. But, by all means, go get some billionaire to buy you an island or build one for you to test out your ideal black spherical cow ideas for government. The US itself was once a crazy experiment in cutting edge governing theory itself. (1) We're not the best, but we are in the top 10% here, no? But I note that everyone who beats us has much smaller populations to satisfy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
  • adrice727 10y ago
    I worked for the federal government for ~6 years (DoD). It's much worse than most people imagine.
  • germinalphrase 10y ago
    Jennifer Pahlka - the founder of Code for America - did a talk recently at the Long Now Foundation that digs into this idea from the perspective of government technology development and use. The feeling I got after listening to her discuss the obviously broken system for creating of procuring government technology is that people are earnestly trying to produce quality tools, but are forced into ridiculously slow improvement schedules due to the procurement standards and laws. It talk includes, of course, a call to arms for tech workers to invest in their government by doing a term of service, fixing government by improving its tools.
  • farrisbris 10y ago
    The amount of waste and corruption in charities should not be underestimated. Of course a lot of them are doing good work, or at least think they are, but there seems to be an increasing amount of charities existing to enrich its owners/founders/etc by spending a very small percentage of their donations on what they actually say they are doing while the rest goes to the administration of the charity or somesuch.
  • tutufan 10y ago
    A nice bout of alimony will take your mind right off of government waste...
• thebigspacefuck 10y ago
  I don't mind paying property and local taxes for this reason, but if my Federal taxes are going to go toward building that fucking wall, I will do everything I can to avoid paying them.
  • jessaustin 10y ago
    I wondered how Mexican taxpayers felt about this...
  • mathgeek 10y ago
    Serious question: were you alright in past years with your federal taxes going to the war in Iraq, as an example? Where do you draw your personal line for "this type of activity against foreign nationals is alright, but that type is where I draw the line?" Anyone can feel free to answer this one. I'm interested in where people are drawing their own lines.
    • pc86 10y ago
      You can't draw your own lines, which is precisely the argument in favor of a small, weak federal government and robust, largely sovereign state governments. The same people glad Trump is in office now were screaming about executive power two years ago, but were thrilled with the huge expansion of federal power with the TSA, etc. It's cyclical and everybody's memory seems to be maxed out at 12-18 months on a good day.
      • mathgeek 10y ago
        > You can't draw your own lines This is true in terms of "where your tax dollars go," but you can certainly draw your own lines in regards to your opinion. The latter is what I'm discussing.
      • Sohcahtoa82 10y ago
        > the argument in favor of a small, weak federal government and robust, largely sovereign state governments Pretty sure we tried that with the Articles of Confederation and it was a total failure.
• marknutter 10y ago
  So you don't take any deductions? Do you pay more than you need to for taxes?
  • pc86 10y ago
    What do deductions have to do with anything?
• deleted 10y ago
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• M_Grey 10y ago
  I'd feel better about paying my taxes if they were well-spent, and not patently wasted on wars, cronyism, and the latest political whims. Some of that is to be expected, but the degree of waste in the US system is appalling and seemingly nearly total. After all, if you take pride in fresh new road surfaces and good schools, you also have to take some responsibility for our foreign policy.
  • Taylor_OD 10y ago
    I owe 3.5k this year and I wish I could give that directly to a social program that would do more good with it. Or at least donate it to the Chicago Public School system. It is frustrating to pay taxes to a in debt state and a in debt country.
• padobson 10y ago
  In the context of living a debt-free existence, I have to disagree. In the monetary policy environment we live in, having debt is the most sensible way to build wealth. Dollars are a terrible store of value. Dollars invested in a savings account are almost as bad. Securities, real estate, and inventory are much better. Dollars invested in education and advertising to multiply the value of securities, real estate and inventory are still way better than a savings account. In an environment where a savings account pays <1% and collateralized debt costs 1-8% and non-collaterlized debt costs 10-20%, the sensible thing is to borrow as much as you can and invest it wisely. In such an environment, I'd be proudest paying cap gains tax at 15% than income tax updwards of 25%.
  • brightball 10y ago
    A lot of people get confused when talking about debt just because types of debt are different. Using debt to generate income = good. Using debt to buy stuff you can't afford = bad. The first pays itself back while the latter does not. When somebody like Dave Ramsey is talking about debt, he's talking about paying off credit card bills, car loans, student loans, mortgages - payments that you're making that leave you personally saddled. Increasing your cash flow by decreasing your expenses. When somebody like the Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) talks about debt he's talking about it in the context that you are: using debt to create an income generating asset, leveraging the tax advantage to increase cash flow and holding the asset as more valuable because held cash would simply result in devaluation through inflation. Increasing your cash flow by generating more cash flow. Headlines should really start trying to clarify Bad debt vs Good debt.
    • ChuckMcM 10y ago
      I resonate strongly with this position but don't think the media will ever be able to express the nuance well. I explain to people about the difference between borrowing to buy a farm tractor that lets you double the money per acre you can get on your farm, vs borrowing to buy a super elite electric car that only drives you to the same places (and usually at the same speed) as your old gas car did. One debt increases your annual revenue for as long as you own it, the other increases your annual car expense as long as you own it (decreaing your revenue).
• Ntrails 10y ago
  > It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school. Not to mention an investment in the costs you'll impose upon the state in your dotage.
• overcast 10y ago
  I thought that was what I was already doing paying back + interest on school loans?
• rsync 10y ago
  "Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind." I think there's an important distinction to be made between two different sorts of "high taxes". One is a high absolute amount of taxes - you made millions of dollars in a year and therefore your absolute tax payment is relatively quite high. The other is a high percentage tax rate. I don't mind paying a high absolute rate of taxes - I think that is the scenario in which one can think fondly of all the things that government provides - things like: "It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school." However, there comes a point in percentage tax rates where basic fairness comes into question. I'm sure it varies from person to person, but I think an effective tax rate north of 40% is getting in the danger zone. As a US citizen who lives in California, in Marin, and owns land, my effective tax rate is 50%, give or take, and I think that's a problem. It's very difficult to rationalize that every 60 minutes I work, ~30 minutes of that work product is appropriated by government.
  • guyzero 10y ago
    You could move. Oh, what's that, Marin is really great and a lot better than taking the tax cut and moving to rural Nevada? Exactly.
  • digler999 10y ago
    I agree with you. The poor can be affected by this as well, in the case of fines. A $150 speeding ticket isn't more of an inconvenience to most of us, but a poor person could be ruined by it. Nobody should escape consequences entirely, but I think the poor should be given some exemption from the governments iron-fist policy with fines, penalty fees, and bench warrants when you dont pay them.
    • m_eiman 10y ago
      There's a simple solution: here in Scandinavia at lot of monetary punishments are based on your income. E.g. your speeding ticket costs you a week's pay. (Yes, tax evaders get off too easy with this system)
  • tinco 10y ago
• KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  If you enjoy paying taxes, here's an offer: Why don't you pay some of mine? The point is, folks who advocate for higher taxes aren't being altruistic, they're advocating for everyone else to be paying more.
• teekert 10y ago
  I also don't like taxes but I like seeing lepers in the street, driving over holes in the road, having my kids acquire debt to go to school etc even less. Paying taxes is completely selfish. To the people saying that debt is not so bad, please realize that you get that debt from a private institution that subsequently collects interest. Said institution does not have to work for this interest, it merely has to sign your debt into existence. The monetary system we have now, where money is always created as debt by a group of elites with specials rights is not fair.
• jMyles 10y ago
  > Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school. Spoken like someone who wasn't on the receiving end of bombs, troops, torture, imprisonment, or theft to enrich the already rich - you know, the bulk of government spending. I pay my taxes in order to avoid being a victim of state violence, but when I do, I say a prayer for the victims of my failure to be strong enough to do the right thing, which is to deprive the state of the means to do evil.
• sanderjd 10y ago
  I also don't mind paying a lot of taxes. But I wish I could pay more than the tiny amount I pay to my state, and less than the huge amount I pay to the federal government, so that I could have a louder voice in how the money is being spent. I can't see how we would transition from where we are now to that system, though. I wouldn't want to see state taxes massively raised before massively lowering federal taxes, and I wouldn't want to see federal taxes massively lowered before we have replaced a lot of critical federal programs at the state level. So I've settled on being ok with paying lots of taxes the current way, where a lot gets "wasted" on things I would prefer not to pay for, but a lot also gets spent on things I believe improve my life.
• Shivetya 10y ago
  well you might feel differently if you factored in all the embedded taxes you pay on top of fees for government services an licensing. there are those who don't know how much they pay, they just know what they take home there are those who know their income tax, medical, etc, deductions are and then there are those who see other avenue of taxation that effects the price of goods and services we make use of I have no problem paying my taxes but why would be happy about it when I cannot recall a single government out there that is using them responsibly?